The food service industry or the catering industries as the British people like to call it includes those places, those institutions, and those companies that are  responsible for preparing any meal outside the home. The food service industry or the catering industry encompasses restaurants, school cafeterias and hospital cafeterias, different catering operations, and many other formats like the catering services provided for different events.

The catering industry is sometimes associated with event management companies as they are primarily engaged in providing single event-based food services. They prepare food at an off-premise site and generally have equipment and vehicles to transport meals and snacks to the events. These industries may be affiliated with some Banquet halls with catering staff. The western food services are commonly found catering at graduation parties, wedding receptions, business or retirement luncheons, and trade shows. Industries that come under the food industry other then catering at parties are associated in the Food services and drinking places sub sector where they prepare meals, snacks, and beverages according to the customers order for immediate on-premises and also for off-premises consumption. There are a large number of establishments in these industries. Some are concerned with providing food and drink only; while others provide various combinations of seating arrangements, waiter/waitress services and venue related amenities, which may include limited entertainment. The food industries in this sub-sector are grouped based on the type and level of services they provide. They are categorized as full-service restaurants; limited-service eating places; special food services, like food service contractors, caterers, and mobile food services; and drinking places.

There are companies that supply the foodservice operators these companies are called foodservice distributors. the Foodservice distributors sell goods like small wares (kitchen utensils) and foods in bulk like they may provide buns for the burgers, neat clean and processed chicken pieces cut into various shapes (breast pieces, fillets, fingers, boneless cubes) for putting into burgers or other chicken dishes .There are companies that manufacture products in consumer version only and some in both consumer and food service versions. The consumer version usually comes in single serving packages with elaborate label design for attracting people. The foodservice version comes in an industrial size and often lacks the attracting colorful label designs.

Aramark Limited is a food service industry with 240,000 employee worldwide ranking as the 19th largest employer on the FORTUNE 500. It is a food and apparel service partner to many organizations across a large range of sectors, including business and industry, judicial, education, health care, offshore and defense.  First for Foodservice is a large foodservice company in the United Kingdom that delivers food and catering equipment to the catering industry and has around 1,100 delivery trucks according to a rough estimate. first for food service has more than 40 storage depots across the country and delivers all kinds of frozen, fresh and chilled food and ingredients to more than 50,000 businesses, educational establishments hospitals and restaurants.